The Echo
by ariel2me
Summary: "Where did you go, Lanny?" Her brother Rodrik still calls her Lanny, but Alannys Harlaw no longer feels like Lanny, Lanny with the laughing eyes and the fierce strong face.


_Lanny was his pet name for her mother; only the Reader called her that. (A Feast for Crows)_

 _Alannys Harlaw never had the sort of beauty the singers cherished, but her daughter had loved her fierce strong face and the laughter in her eyes. (A Feast for Crows)_

 _Asha shifted in her seat. "My mother raised me to be bold. If I do not go, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I had."_ _(A Feast for Crows)_

* * *

Her brother was her closest childhood companion. Her sister Gwynesse was nine years older, already wed and living away from Ten Towers by the time Alannys was a girl of seven. It was Rodrik who raced up and down the stairs with her, who explored every inch of the ten towers with her. It was Rodrik she dared and challenged to look down into the darkness below as they ran breathlessly across the bridges connecting the towers on starless nights.

It was Rodrik she laughed with, peals and peals of mirth, laughter that reached their matching brown eyes as they renamed each of the ten towers with naughty names, ridiculous names, absurd names.

It was Rodrik who taught her how to read and write, after their father decided that Ten Towers no longer needed a maester, now that his only son and heir had learned that particular skill. Lord Harlaw had been suspicious of the breed of maesters in the first place, like so many ironborn, and only agreed to accept one in his castle upon the insistence of his overlord Quellon Greyjoy, whose zeal for reforming the Iron Islands seemed boundless.

* * *

 _She_ was her brother's closest childhood companion as well, for Rodrik was thought to be strange and different by other boys his own age.

"Where did you go, Lanny?" her brother always asked, when she was out of his sight, even for a little while.

* * *

"Where did you go, Lanny?"

She had gone after the boys who mocked her brother for loving books more than axes, their Harlaw cousins who laughed and jeered and said that Rodrik should be the one wearing a dress, not his sisters.

"You leave him be!" Alannys had shouted, her eyes glaring at them, her finger pointing at each and every one of them in turn, singling out her brother's tormentors one by one. "You leave my brother be, or you'll have to answer to _me_."

"How does it help Rodrik, to have his younger sister coming to his rescue? You'll only make things worse for him," their mother had scolded Alannys, but Rodrik had not minded. "My bold Lanny," he called her. "Bold and fierce and strong."

No one else called her Lanny. She would never allow them to. That was for Rodrik, only Rodrik, and for no one else.

* * *

"You must not mind so much, Lanny. You must not mind so much what our cousins call me."

"Do _you_ not mind it, that they call you a girl? That they say that you are unmanly, that you are not a true ironborn, that you are like those soft greenlanders with their strange and perverse ways?"

He merely shrugged, saying, "It will not make me less of a man, to prefer the written words to an axe, or a sword, or even the scythe in our sigil. If they cannot see that, then that is _their_ loss, not mine."

* * *

"Where did you go, Lanny?"

She had gone to keep Quellon Greyjoy's heir company, while Rodrik and Lord Quellon spent hours and hours cloistered in the Book Tower, surrounded by scrolls, parchments, heavy tomes and leather-bound books, discussing reform and the new way, lost in a world of their own, to the exclusion of all others.

"What's wrong with the old way? _Our_ way," Balon protested.

"My father would have been happier with someone like your brother as his heir," he confided to her, in a moment of weakness. "I'm not clever enough for his liking." Then, raising his head, proudly and fiercely, as Alannys herself had so often raised her own head, he said, "His disappointment does not make _me_ less of a man. That is _his_ problem, not mine," which was almost an echo of what Rodrik had said about their Harlaw cousins and the names they were calling him.

* * *

"When will you go, Lanny?"

"As soon as we are wed, of course."

"He is a very different sort of man from his father. Will you be happy with him, Lanny?"

She laughed. "I know you think Lord Quellon is a very admirable man, Rodrik, but I never thought to wed _him_ instead of his son."

"Not wed old Lord Quellon himself, certainly, but I would be easier in my mind if you are marrying someone not quite so set in his ways like Balon, someone who is not so convinced of his own rightness."

She stared at her brother with disbelief. "And you think Lord Quellon is not convinced of his own rightness? Who is it who has been trying to force the ironborn to abandon our way of life, come hell or high water?"

"Lord Quellon is open to new thoughts and new notions."

"Balon is bold and fierce and strong," Alannys said. Her kindred spirit, she thought. A man worthy of her.

"Are you certain, Lanny? Are you certain this is what you want, that this is the right path for you?"

"There is never any certainty in life, except in those books you love, Rodrik. I do not wish to spend the rest of my life wondering about what could have been, had I been bold enough to take the chance."

* * *

"Where did you go, Lanny?"

"I am here, am I not?" Here in Ten Towers again, with her brother, with her sister, with the ghosts that followed her from Pyke, who would follow her to the end of the world, whose names were written in blood on her very flesh, whose features were etched with a sharp blade in her heart.

"Are you truly here? Or is this only your ghost, your shadow?"

Balon was not her kindred spirit after all. He was _reckless_ , reckless with her heart and her soul, reckless with the lives of their children. He was reckless and full of injured pride, and those were not substitutes for boldness and strength.

"He never called me Lanny," she told her brother. "I never let him."

* * *

"Where have you gone, Lanny?"

 _There is nowhere I could go, Rodrik, nowhere that will bring me peace, even a moment of peace. Even you could not change that._

She could not call out his name without thinking of the other Rodrik, the son she had named after her beloved brother. And she could not think of that Rodrik without thinking of _his_ brothers, without thinking of all the sons she had lost.

She could not think of her sons without thinking of her daughter.

 _Forgive me, Asha. I raised you to be bold, as I once was, but I could not find my way back to the woman I used to be, to the mother you knew and loved._

* * *

Her brother still calls her Lanny, but she no longer feels like Lanny, Lanny with the laughing eyes and the fierce strong face.


End file.
